Every trailer for a Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby) directed movie over the last decade-plus has made the film look like it would be a guaranteed Best Picture nominee. Whether that proves to be fruition (American Sniper, Flags of Our Father) or not even close (The 15:17 to Paris, Hereafter) doesn’t affect how great the trailers are. Over the last 15 years, Eastwood-directed movies have earned hundreds of millions more combined than they would have otherwise received had they not had terrific trailers. This is true of 2018’s The Mule. After seeing the trailer for The Mule for the first time in early October of 2018, the film instantly vaulted to my most anticipated movie of the year. When it wasn’t screened very much before its opening, I got a little worried. Then I saw the mixed reviews start to come in. At the time of this writing, The Mule has a 62% critics square and a 74% audience score, a little lower than I anticipated based on the trailer but right around what I expected them to be after seeing the film.
Category Archives: Year of Release
At Eternity’s Gate (2018)
Though he was playing a man who was about 25 years younger than his actual age, I could not imagine an actor doing a better job portraying the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh than Willem Dafoe (Platoon, The Boondock Saints). It’s a performance that will net Dafoe his third Best Actor nomination (he also has a Best Supporting Nom for 2017’s The Florida Project), and it could be the one that nets him his first Oscar win. While I don’t think it will happen (and I don’t have a particular reason why in this year’s wide-open field), it will be a movie that many people might not otherwise be interested in a Van Gogh biopic. At Eternity’s Gate worked for me. I am often willing to give a biopic a chance unless I find many of the film’s portrayals fictionalized. Nothing upsets me more than a story claiming to be true that turns out to be anything but factual. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case with Julian Schnabel’s (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Lou Reed’s Berlin) stylistic character study of one of the most famous and mystifying artists ever. Filmed as artistically as Van Gogh lived his life, Schnabel exceeded the confines of a conventional biopic and created something that felt new and refreshing, regardless of the darkness in which Van Gogh lived.
Green Book (2018)
The race for the five Best Actor nominations might be the Academy Awards’ toughest race. Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born) is a lock. There has been some significant buzz for movies that have run in limited release only (Ethan Hawke – First Reformed) and Willem Dafoe (At Eternity’s Gate). Ryan Gosling had a considerable push heading into First Man, but the movie was a miss with critics and audiences. His outstanding performance could be a casualty in this tight year. A new crop of contenders could swoop in for a spot or two (Rami Malek –Bohemian Rhapsody), John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman), Lucas Hedges (Boy Erased). And then there are a couple of oldtimers who turned in a couple of possible final career performances (Clint Eastwood – The Mule) and Robert Redford (The Old Man & the Gun). But I will state, for the record, that one of the men listed above, not named Bradley Cooper, will be knocked out for the career-defining role of Viggo Mortensen (Appaloosa, A History of Violence) in Green Book.
Overlord (2018)
Any great movie year needs a variety of different types of movies:
- You have to have massive heavyweights during Oscar season.
- You need to exclude a handful of movies from contention simply because there isn’t enough room. These would be movies that, during a normal, might not just be considered for a nomination but might win some. These are movies that, when you look at your Top 10 list at the end of the year and don’t see that film’s title, make you scratch your head until you see the list of titles there instead, and then you say to yourself, “Okay, that makes sense.”
- A great movie year needs to have at least one memorable comedy and one memorable horror.
Widows (2018)
After watching Widows, I can very confidently say that if you team up director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, Shame) and writer Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl, HBO’s Sharp Objects), I’m going to have my butt in a theater opening weekend. I’ve heard about Widows for months and saw the trailer the day before I saw the movie. And I still haven’t seen the whole trailer. I only needed to watch the first half of it to know that it was a movie I wanted to see immediately. McQueen, who was narrowly beaten out for Best Director (Alfonso Cuarón – Gravity), hardly seemed upset when, half an hour later, his 12 Years a Slave won topped Gravity (and others) for Best Picture of 2013. He’s been off the grid for the last five years (save for a few shorts), but he is back with a movie that might be better than any of his previous three masterpieces (12 Years a Slave, Shame, Hunger Strike). The only thing missing is an appearance by Michael Fassbender, but you won’t even notice.